Tag Archives: whippets

I always wondered what kind of person would bake a birthday cake for their dog. I guess I’m the kind of person who would do such a thing. Part of the reason is I like to think I’m a pretty crafty chick (I’m not saying I’m a pretty and a crafty chick…I’m saying I’m a chick who’s pretty crafty). It was Finn’s 1st birthday so what better time to test out my canine culinary skills?!

Directions:

Combine the egg, peanut butter, oil, vanilla, and honey, if desired, in a large bowl; blend well. Stir in the carrots and mix thoroughly. Sift together the flour and baking soda and fold into the carrot mixture. Spoon cake batter into prepared pan.

The “batter” looked something like this (blah):

3. Bake in preheated oven for 40 minutes. Let cake cool in pan for 10 minutes; then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Don’t be surprised when your “cake” turns out 1 inch thick and is the consistency of shortbread. It pretty much looked like an epic dog cake fail. That’s when I decided frosting was necessary to hide the flaws (actual frosting recipe link here). I used a light cream cheese base, added peanut butter and a dash of canola oil so I could spread it on the shortbread…I mean cake. Since the cake was so flat, I cut it in quarters and stacked the layers. Here’s the finished product. You’re probably digging the fancy carrot pile on top of the cake, aren’t you? That’s the crafty part of me I mentioned earlier.

Truth be told, I only frosted the 2 sides of the cake that you see in the photo. My perfectionist side lost the battle to my frustrated, the-dogs-won’t-even-give-a-crap-about-what-the-cake-looks-like side. When baking for dogs, you need to know when enough is enough.

I decided to keep my day job and not pursue a career in canine baked goods. But if times ever get real tough and I need to rely on my mad canine culinary skills, at least I know this cake was puppy approved!

Happy first birthday Finn!

Have you ever baked goodies for your dog? Was it an epic success or an epic fail?

He’s a 10 month old whippet, which I’m convinced is old enough to know better…right?? We (the humans) recently took a big leap of faith and started leaving Finn home alone, uncrated, when we left the house. At first, we left him alone for 20 minutes or so and everything was fine when we returned. Then we had to leave him for 45 minutes, then an hour, then 4 hours. Yes, you’re right. Four hours was a little risky on our part…especially knowing he gets bored so easily.

Here’s what tickles Finn’s fancy in the absence of human supervision:

Removing all of the dried moss from the potted plants and then leaving the moss on the kitchen floor. What’s so fun about that?

Finn knows that we keep all of our winter shoes in the basement closet. He also knows that we are a forgetful bunch of humans and never close the closet door. He finds great pleasure in carrying our shoes up to the living room where he chews and chews and chews on them. When we get home and find all of our shoes (and boots, and hats, and slippers) around the house, we just throw everything on top of the mantle because we know if we put it away in the closet, we’ll forget to close the closet door and we’re back to square one.

Where the hell are my missing flip flops, Finn???? I can NOT continue walking around like this!

When I come across one of Finn’s messes, I think to myself, “When I find you, Finn, I’m gonna…” then I find this:

…An adorable whippet who drives me crazy and melts my heart all at once. I forget exactly what it was I was going to do to him and instead I pour a glass of wine, relax with my trouble maker and make a mental note to close the closet door.

I’m pretty sure my puppy is plotting to drive me absolutely bat $h!t crazy…Crazy enough to be taken somewhere far, far away where I can get the necessary help. Sure, Finn is a cute little guy and for the most part fairly innocent looking, but I think when he is alone in his crate, he is busy plotting and planning his revenge on us humans.

You might laugh and think puppies aren’t that smart but I have proof…Proof that Finn is trying to drive me crazy:

Exhibit A – Counter Surfing: He constantly surfs our counter tops and I do not know how to stop it. Any suggestions? One night he even stole my dinner off the counter. I was downstairs walking on the treadmill for 20 minutes and when I came back upstairs to eat dinner, imagine my surprise when dinner was missing…gone…vanished…poof?!?! I did find two super happy dogs nearby so I knew Finn scored the goods with his super counter surfing skills and both he and Theron enjoyed my dinner. Are dogs even supposed to like Taquitos?

Exhibit B – Begging at the Dinner Table: Need I say more? Even our adult whippet, Theron, who is very sophisticated, partakes in the dinnertime begging. She’s just smart enough not to get caught on film.

Exhibit C – Paper towel destruction: This drives me crazy on two levels. One, paper towels are not cheap. Two, when he shreds them, pieces of paper towel end up all over the house and it’s a pain in the butt to pick them all up. Notice Finn looking away like he has no idea why I’m so mad?

Exhibit D – Stealing Boot Liners: Sure, he loves chewing on the actual boot, but he finds a certain pleasure in carefully removing all the liners from our shoes and boots and hiding them making it impossible to wear said shoe or boot. The fluffy boot liners are the best. Again, notice the smug look on his face?

Exhibit E – Stealing Treats from Jacket Pocket: Yep, he’s a thief. I was sitting on the couch one day and he brought over a snack and ate it in front of me (like he was trying to make me jealous, whatever). He left then came back with another one. What??? Where are the treats coming from, anyway? So I watched where the little bugger was going and he kept going back to my husband’s jacket where there is a secret snack stash in the pocket. Guess what honey? The snack stash is no longer a secret.

Exhibit F – Couch Hogging: We do not have a lot of seating in our living room…Enough for the family which consists of 3 humans and two whippets. But in order for all of us to fit on the two couches, there is some seating strategy involved. We all know where we belong on the couch…except for Finn here. He basically took up the entire couch when he fell asleep one night so the rest of the family had to come up with a new seating strategy. And another thing, what kind of dog sleeps like that anyway?

Exhibit G – Mocking Me: You may not be able to tell in this photo so let me explain. This is a picture of a whippet puppy, Finn, trying to make me jealous by hugging my husband and then sticking his tongue out at me probably thinking, “Neener, neener old lady. He loves me more than you.”

How could I not go crazy with all these puppy shenanigans taking place day in and day out?

Does your dog or puppy ever do things that drive you crazy? Or are you too crazy about your dog to even notice?

I feel a little bad about writing this but the whippet puppy honeymoon is O-V-E-R! I know, that probably makes me a rotten person to be tired of all the puppy crap so soon (figuratively and literally). I wrote about being THAT lady…the one who unconditionally loves her perfect little pup…and I do love my pup. I just no longer think he’s perfect. He’s a puppy punk sometimes.

The little dude has no respect for the weekend sleep in tradition. He’s up at the crack-o-dawn ready to go as if it were a Monday or Thursday. Seriously, why doesn’t he understand that Saturdays and Sundays are the only two days we can chill a little in the morning? Is it asking too much to just sleep a little longer?

And why is it that house training was great the first week (so much, in fact, I thought he was borderline genius) and since we have been “working” with him, he has more accidents in the house? I don’t think they’re accidents at all. I know he knows how to tell us he has to go…He does it 95% of the time. That other 5% of the time he’s thinking, “Screw you guys, I’m going wherever I want to go. That’s what puppies do, sucka.” That’s disgusting. Bad puppy.

And why does he have to chew on used tissue? We have allergies in this household so we are always using tissue. We have tissue in every room of the house. Why does he have to find it, pull it out of the trash and chew on it? That’s gross. Bad puppy.

And then there is the whole Ninja Puppy thing. How can he disappear so fast? One second I see him and know the situation is under control then the next second, Poof! He’s gone…vanished…out of sight. We had to barricade 4 different areas of our house to minimize the places he can sneak off to and do Lord knows what. I don’t understand how, while under our strict supervision, he ninjas his way over to the wrong side of the barricade then looks at us like he pulled off a trick that would leave David Copperfield in awe. It’s annoying. Bad puppy.

To help with our puppy woes, we are going to puppy school. It’s really for us humans because the instructors seem to think puppies are perfect (ha!) and humans are the ones who need training. During class last week, we (the human family members) were paying close attention to the instructor, while Mr. Finn, on the other hand, was taking a ‘cat’ nap during class. Very rude. Bad puppy.

It might seem like I don’t like my puppy but I really, really do. He’s still adorable. I even made him a little puppy snuggie to keep him warm during the chillier fall days. The snuggie won’t win any fashion awards but it could win an award for the easiest darn dog garment to make EVER. You need fleece, scissors, measuring tape, marker, Velcro square sticky back thingies, and a sewing machine. It’s supposed to be a whippet fleece coat no-sew pattern but I opted to sew the area by the neck and add Velcro to the belly straps instead of tying it. So there were some adjustments I made to the pattern.

Start off with some cozy fleece…

Then end up with this rockin’ garment:

I just measured Finn (along back and around chest), sketched out my version of the pattern on the fleece with a marker, cut it out, sewed the neck area, stuck on some Velcro square sticky back thingies on the ends of the belly straps and it was done in less than 30 minutes.

See, I really do love my puppy. He is teaching me patience, he is keeping me on my toes and he is keeping my mind distracted so that I don’t freak out about my upcoming half marathon. That’s awesome. Good puppy.

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slowgirlfastdog

Hi! My name is Wendy and I'm the mom of a teenage boy, the wife of my college sweetheart and the owner of 2 lightning fast whippets. I recently took up running and found out that, unlike my dogs, I'm pretty slow. No biggie though, I'm slow at a lot of things like recognizing life's little lessons. Going forward I'll be paying more attention and with this blog I plan to share what lessons life throws my way.